I wanted to test this process myself so I added another ethernet device to my system and perform the udev rules to make them switch places. It worked as expected; what was once eth0 became eth1 and vice-versa.

This leads me to believe that perhaps some of your previous changes (maybe via VASM) changed _something_ that's causing this udev/rules method to not work quite as expected. My suggestion is to (if possible) undo changes you've made in the past, excluding the udev rules that you just made and whatever changes you made to make your internet work (leave those couple changes as-is). Any changes in vasm, any configuration file changes, hosts changes, etc - undo those and reboot.

The other opton is to hope someone else reads this thread with clear vision that can see exactly where you need to go in order to get both devices working effectively.

I can assure you that once you get both devices working correctly you won't be needing to monkey with them anymore - in fact, over time, you'll forget all the necessary steps to get them working correctly . So.... once you get it figured out be sure to write down the necessary steps.

I appreciate you working with me on this, As I said in my first post, I've been trying for over ten years to get Linux going. On this machine, it even powers off on shut-down. The old windows just rebooted!

What I'll do is save the udev rules file, and reinstall the whole system again. That way, I don't have to ask how to change the browser . I tried Seamonkey the first time and tried Opera this time. Seamonkey works better for me. Just wish I could figure out how to have the NumLock on when Linux starts.

I assume that both ethernet devices are showing correctly with ifconfig, correct? If so, and eth0 is behaving properly then I _think_ the next step is to set up a persistent route for eth1 to handle all local network connections. In other words, route all local network connections (192.168.0.x) to the router which will handle appropriate routing from there. This should be able to be done via the 'route' command. I've never had to use this command so I'm basing the syntax on the help file. You should issue 'route' as a command to view the routing table before you start.

Example)route add -net 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev eth1

To me, this translates as:Add a rule to the system to route all local network (192.168.0.x) connections through device eth1.

But, again, I've never needed to use this command and cannot guarantee that it will work. If your router does not use DHCP then you will need to set a static IP for eth1, however if your router used DHCP then you can set eth1 up like you did eth0.

edit:I also want to comment on your not being able to set eth1 to 192.168.0.1. Generally the first IP address in a local network is assigned to the router. So, perhaps, if you're trying to set eth1 to 192.168.0.1 you're running into trouble because that IP address is already on the network (i.e. 192.168.0.1 is probably your router). Of course, your network can be as customized as you want so this may not be the case.

Eureka! I'm not quite sure what I did. But I can now ping 192.168.0.2 through eth1 AND get on the internet through eth0.

I ran the command that you gave and recieved "Network not running" or something like that. (The notes that I was keeping did NOT get saved before the crash!) After trying some other commands, I tried switch the cables between the modem and the switch. The result was that neither the mouse nor the keyboard would work! I wound up hitting the reset button!!! :-{ Booted into TUI changed the settings in vasm and was able to ping nt2k (the win2000 machine). Unfortunately, eth1 (now to the modem) wouldn't show up in vasm (although it did in ifdonfig and lspci).

Shut down the machine, switched the cables back where they belonged, booted to TUI to change the settings, startx, restored /etc/hosts, was able to get on the internet AND root:# ping -c 3 -I eth1 192.168.0.2PING 192.168.0.2 (192.168.0.2) from 192.168.0.1 eth1: 56(84) bytes of data.64 bytes from 192.168.0.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=0.434 ms64 bytes from 192.168.0.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=0.265 ms64 bytes from 192.168.0.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=128 time=0.271 ms

The switch doesn't do anything with the ip address. This machine will be the router as soon as I get SAMBA running so that the workstations (Linux|Windows) can use shared data space, printer, and internet. The workstations are currently Win95 - Win2000 but I'll start switching the newer ones to Linux. I think I'm stuck with Win95 on the older ones as there isn't enough ram and they're not upgradable.

Now to figure out how to get the NumLock to stay on!

A big thank you to the whole team, not only helping me with this new operating system, guiding me while I learned some of the commands (big difference from DOS), your EXTREME patience, and keeping me motivated to "keep on keeping on!"

I have been looking at several distributions, always favoring Slackware, got a few to install, or run as the case may be. I was attempting to download Slack 12 when I found VL4 Live better suited to my 18 years of Windows and 5.9 fits even better!

PS: I did have one anomaly that I have corrected. I turned off the pc last night after posting the preceding. When I turned it on this morning, it failed to get the IP address from the DHCP. I found the solution in VASM by removing Link1 and Link2 (Static and DHCP) the adding the DHCP connection first then the static one. All is well.